


Icebreaker

by taichara



Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:00:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hyouga discovers something small but precious went awry for his master before the Sanctuary siege -- but it's better late than never, right?  Especially when it concerns you?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icebreaker

**Author's Note:**

> _prompt: author's choice, author's choice, message from beyond the grave_

It was well past midnight on Sanctuary’s holy mount, night having overcome them all at once as the fallen were laid to rest; and Hyouga found himself quickly discovering that there were things more painful still to have to contend with than being the only Bronze Saint to bury his master that day.

The ceremony itself had been a simple one. At that, it could barely be called a ‘ceremony’; the dead, swathed in rough linen shrouds, were placed into the earth with a few soft words and covered with the waiting soil and stones, and only the long-dead Holy Father in his crypt high above received different treatment. Still, there had been enough time spent that now the Saint of the Swan found himself in the deep of the night attending to a task he didn’t want to think of.

As Camus’ surviving student, it fell to him to see to his dead master’s belongings.

There were worse fates, he reminded himself, steeling his insides to ice as he climbed the Mount’s steep winding steps, crossed over the portico of Aquarius Temple (… no familiar voice rasping a challenge, no burred welcome …), paced slowly across the shattered flagstones towards the stony box that made up the Temple’s rear. There were worse fates …

_At least someone – I’ll bet that it was the Aries Saint – scoured away the blood in here.  
I don’t think I could stand to come back here otherwise._

Whatever awaited, Hyouga had to contend with alone. He’d asked Milo whether he wanted to join him, and was rebuffed – in hindsight, he should have expected that response. Whatever had been between his master and the Saint of Scorpions, Milo’s burning-eyed silence at Camus’ graveside should have told him it was much too soon, the wounds too fresh. 

Hyouga understood that all too well. 

He was through the gaping archway in the temple enclosure now, down the perilously steep flight of stony steps into the dark below – _‘Master Camus lived underground …?’_ – catching lamp sconces alight as he went. Shadows danced like ghostly apparitions across the ancient stone, flickered madly as he fumbled the heavy orichalc key into the door that lurked at the base of the passage, and as he pushed the portal open Hyouga tried not to think too hard on how much the whole thing felt like he was walking into a tomb.

On the other side of the door was frosted lantern-light, and snowy white, and water.

_Master, what …_

Two chambers, possibly three -- if ‘chamber’ be used to describe the merest indications of separating space, brief wedges of stonework projecting from the walls in sharp angles, hollowed for shelving. Ahead and to his right lay the larger space (spaces?): furthest from him in that direction, a bed more like a stony couch but piled with tasseled bedding, two wooden chests bound with gold-shining straps and, somewhat incongruously, a wardrobe against the furthest wall of all, all of it half-tucked behind one of those wedges of stone; closer, in a wide central space, a desk cluttered with papers and a scatter of pens, a work-table, a half-dozen short-legged wooden seats cushioned in white, sculptures of glass (or eternal ice; he could not tell which) in fantastical shapes, a tiny hearth recessed into the stone wall, a rill of water running through a winding channel cut in the stony floor where snow white woolens didn’t cover it.

To his left, a pool of water dusted with frostrime, as if he’d stumbled into some chthonic cavern; so deep it looked bottomless, black as the night sky, it had been carved into the very stone of the Mount. One lone handprint, a wisp of water frozen against that pool’s rocky lip, spoke of how very recently his master had been submerged there …

Strange quarters, these, compared to the snug comforting cabin they had shared in Siberia. And yet, it all _felt_ of Camus, so strongly that Hyouga stood in the middle of it all and simply stared, adrift and lost, at the strange familiar things until one small detail worked its way into his awareness. A lone sheet of paper half propped on a chair cushion, where it had no reason to be. A sheet of paper covered in his master’s precise, fine hand.

_Why is there …_

Hyouga, shaking off the fog, glanced around quickly; an envelope, unmarked, lay on the floor beneath the work-table, half hidden by the snowy carpets. Ignoring that second stray he crossed over to the chair and picked up the discarded paper –

  


_'My beloved student Hyouga,_

_'You will never see this missive barring circumstances I cannot expect to have occur, but nonetheless I have written against hope, and pray that you forgive your master for the contents of our last correspondence. But then, if you are reading this, I expect you have denied that directive, and I am proud of that decision and ask your forgiveness for commanding such a thing of you. Mu cannot tell you why he had this in his possession beyond that I made the request of him, so there will be little use in pressing the subject should you decide to try._

_'I am wandering. Forgive your master for this as well, if you can, and for choosing not to express these things to you directly. It is not something I am well versed in, I have closed myself off too well. Nonetheless._

_'Hyouga, you have been all that I could have wished for in a student. If I have seemed harsh or unyielding, I can only shake my head, plead my nature, and hope that despite this I have not turned you against me in the end. You are my true successor, and if I have not said as much to you by the time you read this missive than that flaw is mine. It is, at least, a strength to know one’s own flaws. I have tempered my own ice too strongly, I fear._

_'Know that I love you, Hyouga, regardless of what may have happened in the hours before you received this, and that I regret that I have, even now, taken an indirect route to express this to you. I hope, against hope, that this letter has told you nothing that I have not managed to convey before you received it, but in this Holy Father’s grip hope is fleeting._

_'Be well, my student._

_Aquarius Camus'_

  


There it was. All the frozen, barbed words as they had fought; the attempt to seal Hyouga in frozen sleep forever; Camus’ final sacrifice. His request to Milo. His reasons could be inferred, yes, and Hyouga did not doubt him, had not doubted him … but there they were, in painfully written words that had never reached messenger nor recipient.

The slip of paper fluttered to the floor from hands gone suddenly numb, as Hyouga sank to his knees and wept.


End file.
